Monday 23 January saw the launch of the new book by Professor Toby Green, Departments of History and Languages, Literatures and Cultures and Thomas Fazi, The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor - A Critique from the Left (Hurst; The Covid Consensus | Hurst Publishers).

The first edition of the book (sole-authored by Green) was published in April 2021 and reviewed in El Pais, Le Monde, and the London Review of Books among other publications, and now in the second edition Green and Fazi have extensively updated the text to examine events to the end of 2022. They discuss how ‘during the first years of the pandemic, the political mainstream agreed that ‘following the science’ with hard lockdowns and vaccine mandates was the best way to preserve life.’ However, ‘social science reveals the true human cost of this policy’.

The launch event coincided with the 3^rd anniversary of the first Covid lockdown in Wuhan, and was co-organised by Collateral Global. The authors were joined in Bush House by Caitjan Gainty, Department of History and two of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford) and Sunetra Gupta (Oxford). The panel discussed the impacts of the massive increase in inequality, the immense impacts on young people, the shift in democratic norms, and the ongoing consequences around the world.